


Contradictory Parts

by sunrise_and_death



Series: Reapers [2]
Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magical Realism, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, M/M, Murder, Personification of Death, Pre-Relationship, Reapers, canon warnings apply
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-01
Updated: 2019-01-01
Packaged: 2019-10-02 09:52:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,109
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17262080
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunrise_and_death/pseuds/sunrise_and_death
Summary: Death was a mangled mess of a thing. Or, at least, Andrew's was.





	Contradictory Parts

**Author's Note:**

> This is a companion piece to Lucky, set in the same universe, but following Andrew's POV. I don't bother explaining the rules of reapers again, so I really recommend you read that fic first.
> 
> Also, extra warning that canon nonconsensual sex is shown "on screen," but very briefly and and it's not graphic. That said, if that bothers you, skip the section that starts "Sometimes" and ends with "worth it."

Death was a mangled mess of a thing. Or, at least, Andrew's was.

There was something tragic or ironic about that. Maybe both. Regardless, he wasn't amused.

On the upside, his hatred for the thing made him put down the knife before he had anything more than faint scars.

It wasn't much of an upside.

* * *

His steel-trap of a mind ensured that the memory of its first appearance was eternally fresh and unvarnished by time. As pristine as the white bandage on its cheek, the moment came to him in his dreams more often than not.

At seven years old, he'd thought it had come to help. He'd reached for it, called for it, begged and pleaded through the pain of broken limbs. But it had just stood there, passive and vaguely mournful.

Janice hadn't seen it. When he'd asked about it later, she'd scoffed.

"Don't be a drama queen," she'd told him. "You weren't anywhere near close to death."

That was how he learned about reapers.

* * *

He wondered if it liked watching. If the reapers lived off their pain, their fear, and their despair. Why else keep coming back for more?

The minister at the Spears' church said the reapers were God's gift to ease the pain of passing. Andrew had probably seen his reaper more than everyone else in the church combined, and he thought that was bullshit. But he kept his mouth shut. He was good at that. He'd had enough practice.

It was getting harder, though. There was a part of him—the same part that had reached out so uselessly—that wanted to lay down his burden at Cass’s feet.

Maybe that was why he asked while they were driving home from the grocery store one day.

"My reaper?" She was surprised by the question, but she took it seriously. "I've never seen it. I can't imagine it being just one person—you're all so important to me. You and Richard and Drake."

There was no way he could tell her after that.

* * *

Sometimes, he watched it during. If he could. It helped him take himself out of it, ignore what was being done to his body. He went to a different place and imagined killing the boy with the long legs and sad blue stare. He imagined taking all his banked anger and focusing it on destroying this person before they could destroy him.

He wished his reaper looked like Cass. Then he'd know for sure that it was all worth it.

* * *

In juvie, he made a vow to himself: Never again. Letting Cass in had been a mistake and gotten him nowhere. He was not stupid enough to make the same mistake twice. From then on, he would keep himself separate. Immoveable and untouchable.

The boy with the bruises and bandages wouldn't change that. Andrew would make a liar of his reaper.

* * *

His brother almost made a liar out of him, though. With thin wrists and dark circles under his eyes, Aaron was closer to Andrew's shadow than his mirror when they first met.

There was a part of him—the part that had driven a truck into an empty building less than twenty-four hours after Aaron's name had passed through Drake's lips—that wanted to protect Aaron automatically, no deal, no strings attached. But he knew better, so he shoved that part down and laid out his terms.

Aaron hesitated, fingers playing with his long, loose sleeves. "I've seen you before, you know," he said. "I knew it couldn't be me. Whose reaper is themself?"

If he'd had the choice, Andrew would have preferred it.

He looked at his brother and saw desperation. Weakness. He was going to change that, and Aaron's reaper was proof.

He believed Aaron would thank him for.

* * *

Either Andrew was a popular reaper, or Aaron's mother couldn't tell the two of them apart even in her final moments. There was recognition in Tilda's eyes when he twisted the wheel away from her and drove them straight into a concrete pillar.

It was hard to angle the car, but he managed to hit the concrete pillar driver's side first. He caught a glimpse of his own reaper in the backseat as they spun. He preferred being knocked out by the collision.

Unfortunately, he didn’t stay passed out long. When he woke up, sirens were blaring and the thing was crouched over him. It was pale and drawn, like it had been mourning him prematurely.

His head was bleeding, and he was dizzy enough that he spoke to it. "Fuck you," he told it. "You aren't mine."

If it weren't for Andrew's impossible memory, he might have thought he was misremembering the next part. Because the reaper looked at him—not through him—and raised one eyebrow.

"Fuck you," he repeated, incensed in a way he could rarely muster up the energy for. He wanted to pull it apart.

His rescuers thought he was objecting to their attempts to remove him from the demolished car and started cooing reassuringly. He ignored them and stared at the reaper until it winked away.

* * *

Aaron did not thank him. Andrew locked him in the bathroom to get clean and refused to think of it as revenge.

* * *

The endless well of chatter that was Nicky rarely displayed limits. But he seemed to realize that asking Andrew about anything related to the accident would be a fatal decision.

In general, Nicky was harmless and well-meaning, so Andrew let him stay. His decision was reinforced by the knowledge that the only alternative was Luther and Maria's less-than-loving care. He was not sure he'd be able to get away with murder twice, let alone thrice.

Not that Nicky's tendency to run his mouth didn't occasionally make Andrew want to strangle him. Luckily, he was easily dissuaded from pushing too hard when it came to Andrew.

He was not so considerate with Aaron, but Aaron begrudgingly accepted this. He tried to hide it from Andrew, but Andrew caught snippets of their conversations sometimes when he sat on the back stoop and smoked.

They mostly talked about him. "I really think he did it," Aaron admitted one night. All traces of the pathetic drug addict had been buried under layers of hardened anger. "He's cold enough."

Nicky didn't dispute this. But he said, "I don't know. You really think he felt that strongly about her?"

Andrew blew out a long stream of smoke. He wondered what was so hard to understand about a promise.

"Yeah," Aaron answered grimly. "You didn't see it. He hated her. I bet he enjoyed it."

That was fair. In a way, he had, if not for the reasons his brother thought.

There was silence for a moment as both of them contemplated this. Then Nicky sighed. "I wonder if he saw it."

"His reaper?" Aaron's raspy voice—an almost-exact match to Andrew's—went scornful. "I don't think he has one. Who could be important to him?"

Andrew stubbed out his cigarette. "No one," he told the evening air. “Nothing.”

There was no one there to contradict him.

* * *

In a back alley behind Eden's Twilight, Nicky's bruised and bloody face was echoed by the disheveled apparition beside him. The darkness in Andrew fed on it as he beat Nicky's attackers to a near pulp.

It was only the second time he'd defended anyone but himself without a deal to justify it. He didn't regret it, because he didn't believe in regrets. Despite the poor rewards, he looked at Nicky in the police station afterwards and thought he would do it again.

He took the judge's verdict without flinching. Later, that was replaced with a manic smile.

* * *

The world whirled by. Andrew grinned and bore it.

He grinned through Aaron's growing resentment, through the endless tedium of high school, through recruiters' droning attempts to woo him, through Kevin Day's arrogance, and through Riko Moriyama's poorly masked anger.

When Wymack launched into his altruistic spiel, he didn't just grin—he laughed.

It was the least boring option, which was a very small part of why he took the deal.

Maybe he was that stupid.

* * *

Dan had never seen her reaper.

Matt had. It was one of the things he'd spilled before Andrew deposited him at Abby’s.

Andrew didn't even have to ask Renee to know she'd seen hers. It didn't come up when he took her to Eden's, but she brought it up herself several months later during one of their sparring sessions.

They were debating the existence of God. Saint that she was, Renee hadn't brought it up. But high, Andrew couldn't help picking at her faith like an old scab.

"What do you call reapers," she asked calmly, sweeping his legs out from under him, "if not evidence of some kind of divine force?"

"A really bad joke." Flat on his back, Andrew laughed, because he couldn't do anything else.

Renee's eyebrows quirked up, an uneasy reminder. "Most people take comfort in their reapers."

"Most people also believe in guardian angels. I put very little stock in the opinions of most people." Andrew used her distraction to grab her ankle and pull her down to join him. "Reapers are creatures with rules and boundaries, just like us. They like to twist the knife like us too."

"Oh, I don't know." They scrabbled on the floor for a moment before Renee managed to roll away and get up. Andrew was close behind. "I knew I was on the right path because of my reaper." Instead of restarting their fight, she put a hand to the cross on her neck. "Once I saw Stephanie, I knew where my future was."

Andrew rolled his eyes and went for the hit since she wouldn't. "It's a self-fulfilling prophecy," he told her and missed as she dodged back. "You see your reaper and assume they must be important and then you make it so."

"Then what about the people who don't see their reapers until after they've met their person?" Renee asked, thoughtful and placid as always, even as she slammed a palm into Andrew's collarbone. "You're trying to rationalize that which cannot be explained."

It sounded like a challenge and Andrew laughed in the face of it. "Watch me," he said and went in for the kill.

* * *

The mass populace's obsession with reapers sometimes came in handy. Andrew wasn't ashamed to use the tools in front of him, especially not to keep a deal.

Kevin Day believed in the power of reapers, and Andrew needed to keep Kevin Day from falling apart.

"Is Riko your reaper?" he asked Kevin three weeks into their deal. The idea was hysterical and he couldn't hide that.

Kevin flinched at the very idea of it. "No!"

Andrew slapped his back, a mockery of camaraderie. "Then you're going to live. If you were going to die now, it would definitely have his face. There's no one else nearly as important in your pathetic life."

Kevin bristled, but he stayed reassured for four days. A record, and Andrew had learned to take what he could get.

* * *

The picture pinned to the folder about their replacement striker was a near match. Andrew's flawless memory made a list of the differences—hair, eyes, not beat half to death—but there was no mistaking the face. Unless he had a long-lost identical twin as well—highly unlikely—this child was fated to become a very significant part of Andrew's life. 

But Andrew was not in the habit of breaking his promises, even to himself. He relished the swing of his stolen racquet as it slammed into Neil's gut. Finally, he'd found the enthusiasm for Exy Kevin had always wanted from him.

"Better luck next time," Andrew told the fallen child before him. He didn't mean it.

"Fuck you," Neil Josten croaked, and Andrew flashed back to the car crash for a moment.

It only strengthened his resolve.

* * *

Neil effortlessly told him apart from Aaron. Far too effortlessly. Andrew thought back to the vehemence of those first words and felt the knife twist a little deeper.

There was a part of him—the same part that had opened the letter from Aaron so long ago, the same part that had said yes to Wymack's pleas, the same part that had made a deal with Kevin Day for something he couldn't possibly give—that was _interested_.

But Andrew wasn't stupid, so he buried it. It meant nothing. The articles he found in Neil's binder—mixed in with years of reports on Kevin and Riko—meant nothing either.

Andrew was going to destroy him before he could destroy Andrew.

**Author's Note:**

> You can find me on [Tumblr](http://sunrise-and-death.tumblr.com).


End file.
